Friends and neighbours (and rivals): John Shuster on USA’s close curling ties to Canada

“On the prairies of Canada, there’s a curling club in every town,” USA skip John Shuster told Olympics.com in the build-up to his fifth Olympic Games. “And the order, when they formed the town, went like this: Church, curling club, hockey rink.

“Curling’s the second thing they thought of,” said Shuster, a big grin on his face, from his home in Superior, Wisconsin, just across Saint Louis Bay from his curling club, in Duluth, in the State of Minnesota – about a two-hour drive to Canada. “And that says something.”

Later today, here in Beijing, thousands of miles from northern Minnesota and its frigid winters and deep lakes, Shuster’s Team USA will take on Canada with both teams tangled in the round-robin at two wins and two losses.

The defending Olympic champion American men had a hot start, with wins over ROC and Team GB, but they’ve gone off the boil a bit and lost their last two to Sweden and Norway.

USA’s curling has always lived in the shadow of its big neighbour to the north. In Canada, curling is a way of life. It borders on a national obsession. “It’s always been that way,” admitted Shuster, who was part of the U.S. team than, in 2006 in Torino, won a first-ever Olympic curling medal (bronze).

His gold in PyeongChang in 2018 put a halt on three Canadian Olympic golds in a row.

The relationship of the small towns and cities in the northern U.S. states of Minnesota and Wisconsin to nearby Canada is just about as cordial as you might expect. There’s a term: ‘Minnesota-Nice’ (which applies also to Wisconsin) and describes the outsized friendliness you’re likely to find there.

Canada often tops polls trying to locate the friendliest places on earth.

And while Canada’s obsession with curling is year-round and fully